When you still have impressions for somebody who moved on before you’ve had the opportunity to, you figure out how to get over someone when you stop trying. Actively forcing your feelings to stop is not productive. You can’t “make” yourself feel anything, and you need is high time to process your feelings rather than bottling them up, putting them away, and allowing them to sour. And although you should not be trying to stop yourself from feeling anything, you do need to stop trying to act on those feelings. Reaching out to the person who has moved on from you will only reaffirm your rejection. You wouldn’t set the same pair of shoes on the day after they gave you a blister. If someone has moved on from you and you keep trying to talk to them, you are only going to keep yourself from moving forward to a better place.

And while it might seem like doing nothing will slip you into a void you can never crawl out of again, that isn’t true either. The world will constantly be moving all around you. It might seem like no time has gone by at all as you are working on how to get over person. But one day, you are able to look up, look behind you, and see how far away from your relationship you ultimately are, too.

1. Do Nothing

My best advice after a breakup is to do nothing for a little while. Don’t to continue efforts to force things to work with your ex. Hooking up with person once to get it out of your system isn’t a bad thing, but don’t run running after a rebound either. When someone has moved on from you and started a new relationship, you might feel like the only way to get over them is to start your own relationship, too. But what you really need to figure out is how to be your own foundation, and how to channel all of the passion, energy, and chemistry you felt for that relationship back into your own head, where all the elation you hold for yourself and for others radiates.

If you don’t take the time to do nothing and find a way to alchemize your ache back into elation, you risk racing forward too fast and falling off your metaphorical pony. Believe that what you need will come to you. Don’t let your worries, anxieties, and insecurities get the best of you, or you’ll go off on a wild good chase.

2. Tend To Your Blisters

A friend gave me this great metaphor: The more breakups you endure, the more callouses thicken your feet. Sometimes, you need to work on forming new ones to protect yourself. Focusing on your meanders after the relationship is a style of tending to your blisters, taking care of your feet so that you can keep walking.

If you don’t take care of your wounds and tend to them, you risk stimulating the same mistakes in your next relationship. You will be trying to mend your wounded-ness from this relationship, aiming with the person or persons you date next. The process of mending is not linear, and might never be completed, but it needs to start with you and not anyone else.

3. Find A Resourceful Union

After you have given yourself the time, space, and nourishment you need to stand on your own two feet again, it’s time to go looking for a more nurturing, resourceful union that will help you with where you actually want to go in life. If somebody is broken with you and quickly moved on, it’s because the relationship wasn’t get them where they needed to be going. If you had changed your course for them, it would have meant that you weren’t get where you needed to go either.

The union you find might not be in a romantic relationship or even with the next person you date. The union you need might be with a close friend, a co-worker, or a creative peer. Maybe you will start your next project together; maybe you will move in together and build your own home. Wherever it gets you, this new union will give you the tools you need to build something. And that, ultimately, will take you much further than this relationship would have ever permitted you to go.

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